My three keepers led me out by Bristo and the Bruntsfield Links; whence
a path carried us to Hope Park, a beautiful pleasance, laid with
gravel-walks, furnished with seats and summer-sheds, and warded by a
keeper.

The way there was a little longsome; the two younger misses affected an
air of genteel weariness that damped me cruelly, the eldest considered
me with something that at times appeared like mirth; and though I
thought I did myself more justice than the day before, it was not
without some effort. Upon our reaching the park I was launched on a bevy
of eight or ten young gentlemen (some of them cockaded officers, the
rest chiefly advocates) who crowded to attend upon these beauties; and
though I was presented to all of them in very good words, it seemed I
was by all immediately forgotten. Young folk in a company are like to
savage animals: they fall upon or scorn a stranger without civility, or
I may say, humanity; and I am sure, if I had been among baboons, they
would have shown me quite as much of both. Some of the advocates set up
to be wits, and some of the soldiers to be rattles; and I could not tell
which of these extremes annoyed me most. All had a manner of handling
their swords and coat-skirts, for the which (in mere black envy) I could
have kicked them from that park. I daresay, upon their side, they
grudged me extremely the fine company in which I had arrived; and
altogether I had soon fallen behind, and stepped stiffly in the rear of
all that merriment with my own thoughts.

From these I was recalled by one of the officers, Lieutenant Hector
Duncansby, a gawky, leering, Highland boy, asking if my name was not
"Palfour."